TEEN SENSATION NELSON’S AN INSPIRATION

ARSENAL might have taken a gamble on Barcelona winger Denis Suarez in the January transfer window – but if there’s one player Gunners fans can’t wait to see in an Arsenal shirt it’s Reiss Nelson.

Like his best pal and former Manchester City star Jadon Sancho at Borussia Dortmund, 19-year-old wing-star Nelson (right) has been lighting up the Bundesliga.

If the stars had aligned, the pair could have been facing each other at the Etihad today. But the pair went a different route and Londoner Nelson has been turning in eye-catching performances since Arsenal sent him out on a seasonlong loan to Hoffenheim.

Nelson, who missed

Hoffenheim’s first two games back after the winter break with a back injury, said: “It’s crazy! I would never expect myself to be in the Bundesliga in such a big league like this and playing regularly at the top level here as a teenager. I’m an Arsenal player, they are my boyhood club and

I’ve been here since I was eight. I know a year at Hoffenheim will help me when I go back.”

And Nelson’s former headteacher at the

London Nautical School in Lambeth, Neil Atherton, says he isn’t surprised by the teenager’s rise. He said: “Growing up he didn’t have all the stereotypical looks of boys of his age in London who would have shaved eyebrows, earrings, lines in the hair. “He really is an inspiration to other boys here, they see a boy from south London who has now become a world star.”